"SWOOP ON BRITAIN"

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 2, Issue 177, 24 June 1940, Page 6

"SWOOP ON BRITAIN"

CAN ENGLAND BE INVADED POSSIBILITY CONSIDERED REPEAT NAPOLEON'S ATTEMPT Britain has not witnessed a fullscale invasion since the landing of the Normans, for the Spanish Armada was unsuccessful and the land ing of William 111 cannot be counted as an invasion. A real risk of invasion existed, however, between 1808 and 1805, when Napoleon mustered his "Army of England" along the shore of the Straits of Dover and planned to evade the blockading English fleet. He awaited a calm or a fog" to ro'w his army across in thousands of light boats, but perhaps l'orgot that it would have t'aken at least a week for hi:; swarming flotillas to work out of the narrow entrances of Boulogne and adjacent harbours. He planned a mosquito fleet to fight off the Eng lish cruisers, but this was out of the question. The Martello Towers. The reality of the threat, however, led to the erection of those squat Martello towers, many of which may be seen on the low-lying parts of the south-eastern coast of England to-day. Romney Marsh was the site favoured for a possible French landing, and there the engineers dug the Royal Military Canal from Hythe to Winchelsea, to serve as a moat to hold up the French infantry until* the main British army came from the interior. But neither the ditch nor the guns of the towers were needed, because Napoleon could find no way of circumventing those fleets he could never see, and, in 1805, lie broke up his camp at Boulogne and diverted the "Army of England" to the campaigns of Ulm and Austerlitz. The possibility of an invasion was often canvassed during last century, and the main purpose in forming the Territorials in 1908 was to fight off an invader. The problem was dramatised the following year in a play that attracted wide attention. Guy du Manner's "An Englishman's Home,' told of the effort of an ordinary English civilian to defend his household against invaders who were depicted as an extremely hirsute race, with uniforms strongly reminiscent of the hordes of Muscovy. As it turned out Major du Maurier, although a man of 50 years of age, fell, not in England, but in France in March., 1915. A few years before the production of this play, Erskine Childers had written a novel entitled "The Riddle of the Sands," which, published in 1903, gave minute details of the possibility of an invasion bylarge numbers of men towed across from German ports in flat-bottomed boats during some moonless night,' When the Great War broke out, the British Admiralty considered that it was technically possible to smuggle 60,000 men across the North Sea, and it persisted in this belief until December, 1917. Great War Threats. The danger was considered to be greatest in the early days of the war, when most of the Regulars had gone to France, the Territorials were not trained, and a grave shortage of protective mines existed. The British defence plan was based on the possibility of three large raids. An attack on the Tees mouth would have been aimed a( the Middlesbrough blast furnaces and the Cleveland iron mines; descent on the Humber would have imperilled Hull and Imminghaui: and a landing in the Crouch or Blackwater estuaries in Essex would have threatened London from the north-east, Avhere no great natural difficulties stand in the way of a.) invader. As soon as the Great War started, elaborate defences were dug to defend London from this side, bui experts hold that they were most rudimentary until October, 1911. Ultimate!} 7 , three trench systems were built, the outermost running north of Chelmsford and the innermost through Epping. Large military forces were retained for home defence throughout the war; and there is still much controversy as to whether Gcrinany really considered such an invasion. Captain Cruttwell comments on the marked reticence of the post-war German historians on this matter, so that it is still uncertain whether the

German navy refused responsibility for transit not hand over the four or five divisions that would have been written ofl' as a total loss in such an enterprise. All Avriters admit that such an invasion would have had no hope of conquering Britain. Its use would have been in causing material damage and in lowering morale; and that seems to be the position again to-daj'. Now, as on previous occasions, an actual landing cannot be regarded as at all impossible; but it is most unlikely that it could be encompassed on a scale sufficiently large to give the remotest chance of ultimate success. Nevertheless, there is a great difference between "suicide raids" and a full-size invasion and we cannot write off the former .as impracticable. Any large attack would depend on the combined use of sea and air. On the sea alone, the Germans could do little. In the Great War, Germany had a large enough navy and, if she was prepared to lose sufficient ships, could conceivably have got landing parties ,through. But, since the damage to her fleet in Norway, such an attack has become virtually impossible unless aer ial convoys have been developed to a far greater point of efficiently than we have imagined. Further, in addition to Britain's overwhelming seapower, she has the belts of mines protecting the entire eastern coast from tlie Orkneys to the Straits of Dover, and it may be taken for granted that these are constantly resown and are immune from destruction enemy minesweepers. | Troop-Carrying Planes. The only remaining possibility of an invasion is by troops carried in aeroplanes. But the number of soldiers that can be carried by air is relatively small, and there is no case in which a large aerial invasion has occurred without prior preparation, either by the treachery of "fifth column" agents or by a previous occupation. In any case, even if troop-<carry-ing planes evaded the ceaseless "watch and ward" over the North Sea, Britain's defence scheme has been strongly developed in so far as fighter aeroplanes are concerned. These "flj'ing fortresses" have been primarily designed to beat ofT invaders, and their efficacy is proven by the fact that they have brought down almost 60 German raiders, while onl3 r one fighter plane has been lost on our side in this struggle. All the advantages of fighting from adjacent home-bases would be in Britain's favour, and, in addition, she has her strong anti-aircraft defences. The defences built up to fight off German /bombers apply, with still greater force, to a German attempt to land troops from the air. Finally, Britain has an especial!}' strong local defence, if it should ever come to land fighting. There are considerable army forces stationed in Great Britain at the moment, and the Territorials, vastly I strengthened in the drives during Hore-Belisha's tenure of the War Ministry, have been amalgamated in the Regular Army in one grea'. unified organisation by the Armed Forces (Condition of Service) Act of last September. Thus, on see. air, and land, conditions are all against an invasion of Britain by German troops; and, if small parties could be landed, they certainly could not survive. The Incalculable Hitler. When all this has been said, however, the idea cannot be dismissed as altogether fantastic, for we are dealing with a man who is not tied down to the purely military aspects that would have swayed the German High Command in the Great War. Hitler might deem heavy losses of men to be justifiable if he supposed that commensurately demoralising results could be produced on the British civil population. Ps.ychologically> there must always exist a strong temptation for Hitler, in his hatred of England, to attempt some such coup, probably in conjunction with his bombing "Blitzkrieg"; but, unless Germany has some entirely unsuspected forces to bring into play, and unless her command of the air should develop to such overwhelming proportions as we think unat-. taiuable, a landing of troops on the Kast Coast would be foredoomed to failure. Unfortunately, in dealing with an incalculable enemy suHi as Hitlei\ Britain lias.to prepare lor all eventualities, whether they •).• as improbable as a military invasion or as probable as the launching vf unrestricted aerial warfare.